


Treacherous Ground

by riventhorn



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:41:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riventhorn/pseuds/riventhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt on the_eagle_kink. Marcus takes advantage of being a slave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treacherous Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; no profit is being made from this
> 
> Content labels: dub-con, major angst, twisted master/slave dynamics

Esca doesn’t look at him. 

Marcus had securely fastened the lodge door behind them and stood waiting, expectant. He had hoped— _believed_ —that Esca would turn to him and explain whatever madness he’s playing at as soon as they snatched a moment to themselves. 

But Esca just shrugs off his tunic and tosses it to the ground. He leaves it there for Marcus to pick up while he stretches out on the pile of furs. “You can go,” he says. “There shall be a hunt tomorrow, I expect, and I’ll need you early to sharpen my spears.” 

The fury that burns through Marcus is as searing as the moment when he knew he would never rejoin the legions. He picks up the tunic, crushing the coarse wool in his fist. He will show Esca—no, he will show this _Briton_ that he cannot be so easily cowed, that he is no man’s _slave_. 

He takes a step towards Esca, who…closes his eyes.

It is this casual disregard of the threat Marcus poses that stops him. Surprise drives away the fury for a moment. Standing silently, he hears the susurrus of the waves and the muted conversation of the Seal People. 

He is surrounded by enemies, and Esca is the only thing standing between him and a quick, ignoble death. And Esca knows this. 

“Do for me what I did for you,” Esca says, keeping his eyes shut, “and you’ll live.”

Marcus stands a moment longer, and then he masters himself. He folds the tunic and lays it aside. He stokes the fire. He acts the slave. 

_But do not think for one moment that I am one_ , he tells Esca in his mind. And when he looks at the lithe form, sprawled by the fire, he names it with the word that he should have been using all along. Not Esca. Not _companion_. But slave. _My slave._

*

He’d wanted Esca for a long time. His serious face, the quick flex of his muscles as he bent to his tasks, the obstinate cast of his mouth—they reminded Marcus of Posides, and the long summer when they had first joined the legions. How well he remembered the hard, grueling days, and the drowsy nights they had spent wrapped around each other. An arrow had spent Posides’s life, his blood gurgling out of his mouth onto Marcus’s fingers. But in Esca he had seen a second chance, the promise of friendship and a warmth to keep away the cold of body and heart. Had he not caught Esca’s glances when they bathed? Had he not felt the tremble in Esca’s fingers as he eased the aches in his leg? 

A mistake, to look to a Briton for companionship. His uncle had been right. Esca had only been waiting for his opportunity, playing Marcus false all the while. 

But Esca was still his slave, and if he had refrained before from not taking what he desired because it would not have been honorable—well, Esca had shown him how much he recked of honor. If Marcus were to play the slave, he would do as Esca should have done for him. He would give Esca everything he desired, as an obedient, _honorable_ , slave should, attentive to his master’s needs. Yes, he would be _most_ attentive. 

And so the next evening, when he followed Esca back to his lodge, he knelt to untie Esca’s boots, ignoring the twinge in his bad leg. 

“What are you—” Esca began.

But he said, “You did this for me,” and Esca fell silent. Marcus let his fingers touch the bare skin of Esca’s ankle after he removed his boot, sliding them under the worn fabric of his bracchae. He shuffled a little closer, and when he raised his head, it was level with Esca’s groin. 

Esca made a noise, and Marcus looked up to find that his eyes had widened, his mouth parting on an indrawn breath. 

“But you didn’t do this, did you?” And with the words, he pressed his hand to Esca’s length. 

Esca’s fingers shook when they touched his hair. “Marcus—no,” Esca whispered, but he didn’t move away. 

Marcus reached for his cock tenderly—like he would have if Esca had ever come to him before. He coaxed it with rough, slow strokes into hardening. It was just as pretty as he had imagined it, curving a little to one side, growing shiny and wet around the tip. He licked it, and Esca jerked back. 

“You—I—” Esca stuttered ineffectually.

Marcus gripped his hips, holding him in place, letting some of his anger seep out through his fingers, digging them into Esca’s skin. “You told me to _serve_ you,” he hissed, throat already rough like he had been sucking Esca’s cock for hours. 

“I didn’t—”

“You meant it exactly like this.” He squeezed Esca’s ball sack gently. “Look at me and tell me you never wanted it. Or are you going to lie to me again?” 

He spat those last words, and Esca’s shoulders slumped, his mouth squeezing together. 

_I would have loved you._ Marcus let the bitter thought fill him as he bent and wet his lips, sliding them around Esca’s cock. _I would have loved you, you_ coward.

“Did that please you, domine?” he asked when Esca had spent himself in his mouth, filling his tone with a false obsequiousness.

Esca struck him—a slap of his hand across Marcus’s cheek. He flinched, and then Esca was on him, pushing him down, tearing savagely at his bracchae. Marcus lifted his hips, pushing eagerly into his hand, biting his tongue against the words fighting for existence. He whimpered instead as he came, muzzy eyes watching his come drip between Esca’s fingers.

*

He spent the next two evenings with his mouth around Esca’s cock, swallowing his seed even though it tasted as foul as his betrayal. And Esca made ineffectual protests, pushed weakly at his shoulders, and let himself be taken. 

Tonight, when Esca’s chest was heaving in the aftermath of his climax, he rested his face against Esca’s thigh and eased his fingers along the curve of Esca’s arse. “You want more, don’t you?” he asked.

“No,” Esca gasped, sucking in air and staring at Marcus, eyes wide.

“I’ve gotten a great deal of practice in telling when you’re lying,” he replied and pushed Esca’s thighs apart, rucking his tunic further up around his belly. 

“Of course, you never did this for me,” he observed when he had a finger inside Esca, stroking, probing, and Esca was on his stomach, face buried in his arms. “Thought you were too good for me then, didn’t you? Refused to sully your honor by giving me any comfort.” He tugged at his own cock, like he had all those nights lying in his own bed, thinking about Esca. “But now—now you’ll take whatever you can get.”

Esca pushed back for more even as he whispered in a shaken voice, “You were never cruel, Marcus.”

“I hadn’t been beaten then,” he said and gripped his cock, slotting it into place against Esca’s hole. “I hadn’t had my life offered like a dog’s.” 

“I—I haven’t— _ah_!” Esca lost his words in Marcus’s first thrust. 

Marcus rutted, fast and eager, Esca’s body as sweet as he had imagined. He set his teeth in Esca’s shoulder to keep back the deep groans swelling inside him, and Esca convulsed, tearing away in a move that drove him further onto Marcus’s cock. 

“Does this please you, domine?” Marcus whispered, gripping Esca’s hair and yanking his head back, hearing Esca’s own voice driving him to his knees and seeing the disgust in the Seal Prince’s eyes. 

When he came, he stayed in Esca, rolling his hips, spurting his seed, feeling it soaking his cock. Esca worked a frantic hand under his body and climaxed again a moment later. 

He stayed on his stomach when Marcus pulled away. “Get out,” he said in a quiet, dull tone. “Get out and _leave me be_.”

Marcus went back to his own pallet, surrounded by strange bodies and a smoky darkness that choked him. He lay still, staring upwards, and thought of Isca Dumnoniorum. The rosebush in the pot by the door. The sound of the watch hailing each other in the night. The smell of oiled leather and mud. The cool shadows that lingered by the gate. 

His tears stung, chilling his skin as they slipped down. 

*

_After_

*

I thought I’d lost you.

*

Esca stood at the end of the corridor by the open door. Rain sluiced down in front of him. Marcus hesitated a moment, gathering himself, and then stepped forward. Esca’s shoulders tensed at the sound of his ragged gait.

Marcus stopped again, a few steps from him. Too far away to be able to reach out and touch.

“I cannot forget, Marcus,” Esca said and turned to face him. A draft of wet air flew to Marcus’s nostrils, and he breathed the smell of the rain.

“Can you forgive?” he asked.

Esca regarded him in a long silence. “Can you?” he replied at last.

Marcus had to tilt his face away, looking at the uneven surface of the wall. He scraped his palm over its roughness. “Maybe.”

Esca nodded and turned his attention back to the outer world. 

Two breaths, and Marcus went to his side. He hunched against the doorway, staring out at the muddy water slowly swallowing the path towards the garden.

~Fin~


End file.
